Despite extensive analysis, Fermi bubbles defy explanation

August 1, 2014

(Phys.org) —Scientists from Stanford and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have analyzed more than four years of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, along with data from other experiments, to create the most detailed portrait yet of two towering bubbles that stretch tens of thousands of light-years above and below our galaxy.

The bubbles, which shine most brightly in energetic gamma rays, were discovered almost four years ago by a team of Harvard astrophysicists led by Douglas Finkbeiner who combed through data from Fermi's main instrument, the Large Area Telescope.

The new portrait, described in a paper that has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, reveals several puzzling features, said Dmitry Malyshev, a postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology who co-led on the analysis.

For example, the outlines of the bubbles are quite sharp, and the bubbles themselves glow in nearly uniform gamma rays over their colossal surfaces, like two 30,000-light-year-tall incandescent bulbs screwed into the center of the galaxy.

Their size is another puzzle. The farthest reaches of the Fermi bubbles boast some of the highest energy gamma rays, but there's no discernable cause for them that far from the galaxy.

Finally, although the parts of the bubbles closest to the galactic plane shine in microwaves as well as gamma rays, about two-thirds of the way out the microwaves fade and only gamma rays are detectable. Not only is this different from other galactic bubbles, but it makes the researchers' work that much more challenging, said Malyshev's co-lead, KIPAC postdoctoral researcher Anna Franckowiak.

"Since the Fermi bubbles have no known counterparts in other wavelengths in areas high above the galactic plane, all we have to go on for clues are the gamma rays themselves," she said.

What Blew The Bubbles?

Soon after the initial discovery theorists jumped in, offering several explanations for the bubbles' origins. For example, they could have been created by huge jets of accelerated matter blasting out from the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Or they could have been formed by a population of giant stars, born from the plentiful gas surrounding the black hole, all exploding as supernovae at roughly the same time.

"There are several models that explain them, but none of the models is perfect," Malyshev said. "The bubbles are rather mysterious."

Creating the portrait wasn't easy.

"It's very tricky to model," said Franckowiak. "We had to remove all the foreground gamma-ray emissions from the data before we could clearly see the bubbles."

From the vantage point of most Earth-bound telescopes, all but the highest-energy gamma rays are completely screened out by our atmosphere. It wasn't until the era of orbiting gamma-ray observatories like Fermi that scientists discovered how common extra-terrestrial gamma rays really are. Pulsars, supermassive black holes in other galaxies and supernovae are all gamma rays point sources, like distant stars are point sources of visible light, and all those gamma rays had to be scrubbed from the Fermi data. Hardest to remove were the galactic diffuse emissions, a gamma ray fog that fills the galaxy from cosmic rays interacting with interstellar particles.

"Subtracting all those contributions didn't subtract the bubbles," Franckowiak said. "The bubbles do exist and their properties are robust." In other words, the bubbles don't disappear when other gamma-ray sources are pulled out of the Fermi data – in fact, they stand out quite clearly.

Franckowiak says more data is necessary before they can narrow down the origin of the bubbles any further.

"What would be very interesting would be to get a better view of them closer to the galactic center," she said, "but the galactic gamma ray emissions are so bright we'd need to get a lot better at being able to subtract them."

Fermi is continuing to gather the data Franckowiak wants, but for now, both researchers said, there are a lot of open questions.

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58 comments

It's called a confinement dome. Hence "the outlines of the bubbles are quite sharp, and the bubbles themselves glow in nearly uniform gamma rays over their colossal surfaces, like two 30,000-light-year-tall incandescent bulbs screwed into the center of the galaxy." -AND- "farthest reaches of the Fermi bubbles boast some of the highest energy gamma rays, but there's no discernable cause for them that far from the galaxy.

The sharp boundaries of the bubbles argues in favor of the superwave theory of LaViolette. Periodic cosmic ray outbursts from the central supermassive grey hole are the origin. A recent wave which passed during the last ice age is now illuminating the Crag Nebula. But then, this idea is too disturbing to consider. Surely these thinkers have a better idea?

I like the Primer Field idea of bowl-shaped magnetic fields, but the problem I have is conceiving of how these fields are formed. Do you know if LaPoint has put together any equations or theories beyond the observation alone describing the nature of these fields?

It's called a confinement dome. Hence "the outlines of the bubbles are quite sharp, and the bubbles themselves glow in nearly uniform gamma rays over their colossal surfaces, like two 30,000-light-year-tall incandescent bulbs screwed into the center of the galaxy." -AND- "farthest reaches of the Fermi bubbles boast some of the highest energy gamma rays, but there's no discernable cause for them that far from the galaxy.

See video: It answers the question. There is a perfectly good reason for them. It would be surprising If these where not found.

Sub:In search of origins.About 20-24 PPT projections were presented by me combining my two research papers-1.NANDI AN INTRODUCTION OF NEW CONCEPT FOR FLOW-FIELDS INTEGRATION By VIDYARDHI NANDURI 2.SUPER-IMPOSITION OF VISIBLE -INVISIBLE MATRIX MODE OVER SPACE BASED OBSERVATIONS VIDYARDHI NANDURI THE FIRST COSPAR SYMPOSIUM- Planetary Systems of our Sun and other stars and the Future of Astronomy, Bangkok, Thailand, 11-15 Nov 2013 additionally, More projections and a few books were made available at the poste desk.All these should have helped to -Vision next dimensional Science.-Milky-way becomes onset-mode receiver.

Sigh! Text editors, going from "none of the [several] models is perfect" to 'defy explanation'. If they don't stress the predictions of the models severely, the Fermi bubbles 'defy' nothing.

Indeed, the abstract of the arxiv paper claim only verifications, of the bubbles not being made by jets and: "Both inverse Compton (IC) models and hadronic models including IC emission from secondary leptons fit the gamma-ray data well. In the IC scenario, the synchrotron emission from the same population of electrons can also explain the WMAP and Planck microwave haze with a magnetic field between 5 and 20 μG." [ http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.7905 ]

But it seems odd that these relatively recent features are "different from other galactic bubbles". But the [long, quickly scanned] paper doesn't seem to say anything on other bubbles or how the analysis differ; the above well fit and agreeing models seem to be standard.

@no_fate: Bullshit, and an embarrassing testament to that you didn't even opened the paper, similar to the many crackpots that infested this comment thread. The sharp boundary, which is a result of particles acting on gas, is just a testament to a dynamic, recent, short lived process.

Your "electric universe" idea, if such pseudoscience BS is what you are attempting to inject into the science of the paper, or else a pattern search failure akin to EU pseudoscience, fails because the galactic magnetic fields are non-homogeneous, they point in every which way. [See the Planck data archive.]

@no_fate: Bullshit, and an embarrassing testament to that you didn't even opened the paper, similar to the many crackpots that infested this comment thread. The sharp boundary, which is a result of particles acting on gas, is just a testament to a dynamic, recent, short lived process.

Your "electric universe" idea, if such pseudoscience BS is what you are attempting to inject into the science of the paper, or else a pattern search failure akin to EU pseudoscience, fails because the galactic magnetic fields are non-homogeneous, they point in every which way. [See the Planck data archive.]

You do realize that there are electrically driven stars inside the non-homogeneous galaxy you speak of right? So of course they point in every which way. Connectivity at all scales.

Just looking at the "artistic rendition" above, I would be inclined to say it's generally a combo of the central gravity well and centripetal force of galactic spin... So, to be safe, I'm sticking with selection 8 on EWB's list.But then, I've been known to be wrong before. Just ask my wife...

Those are derived from theory, the schrodinger equation. Not z-pinches. It doesn't even make any sense as the hourglass orbitals appear in they hydrogen atom, when there is only one moving charge. "This looks like that" is really not a sensible way to do science.

The bubbles are shapes formed in the center of nested toroids. These outline in turn the inflow/outflow phase waves that constitute the mercaba's black hole singularity at the toroid pinch point. I can point to an illustration if anyone is interested

This same structure is universal and applies to the atom or any naked singularity

Stuff like this and the microwave thruster that produces thrust without reaction mass reminds me of something I've been saying for years. I've said many times that much of what we think we know about physics is probably wrong. This is why I think the dark matter effect is more likely to be an error of our understanding of physics than turning out to actually be dark matter. I am also convinced after a lifetime of being skeptical that we have been visited by ET which means there must be a way to travel FTL and there are sources of power beyond our current knowledge. Wacky as all that sounds.

You are right, dark matter does not exist.What "truly" exists is scale physics.Different physics apply at different scales, the scientific community has thus far only accepted 2 scales: equal or greater than an electron, smaller then an electron, classic vs quantum physics. But I tell you now, there is galactic physics, and one of the unique physics is agglomerated cellestial gravity, where gravity at the galactic level functions not by its parts, but moreso by its whole. For this reason, the stars in a galaxy can all have the same orbital velocity except when close to dense object like black hole. Dark matter, lols, fools.The same galactic physics can start to explain this phenomenon. Radiation in large sum would form sphere like shape. My best bet is that the milky way accumulated this radiation on its journey through previous galactic collisions, and picked up massive amounts of radiation. It does mean however, that the radiation was originally dense enough.

As Aristotle stated, there may be infinite sub-divisible particles which may or may not mean there is infinite scales of physics. We will never know as our sight will never approach infinite. God gave us eyes not so we can see, but so we can be blind.

It's called a confinement dome. Hence "the outlines of the bubbles are quite sharp, and the bubbles themselves glow in nearly uniform gamma rays over their colossal surfaces, like two 30,000-light-year-tall incandescent bulbs screwed into the center of the galaxy." -AND- "farthest reaches of the Fermi bubbles boast some of the highest energy gamma rays, but there's no discernable cause for them that far from the galaxy.

It's called a confinement dome. Hence "the outlines of the bubbles are quite sharp, and the bubbles themselves glow in nearly uniform gamma rays over their colossal surfaces, like two 30,000-light-year-tall incandescent bulbs screwed into the center of the galaxy." -AND- "farthest reaches of the Fermi bubbles boast some of the highest energy gamma rays, but there's no discernable cause for them that far from the galaxy.

As Aristotle stated, there may be infinite sub-divisible particles which may or may not mean there is infinite scales of physics. We will never know as our sight will never approach infinite. God gave us eyes not so we can see, but so we can be blind.

Holy shit religion and philosophy in one post! Ive gone blind!

-Only temporary. Im not even going to research what youre claiming here to see if its bullshit or not. Aristotle was a philo who had absolutely no access to experimental data. Therefore he couldnt begin to postulate on the nature of matter.

And no, priests gave you religion so you could be taught to ignore your senses and your common sense. This is the only way to get you to do that which you would not normally do, like hating people youve never met and killing them on the battlefield. And also forcing your wife to make babies until it kills her.

Yes well, only intelligent people know intelligence when they see it, so I'll spare you and your dim witted humor and your even worse chaotic logic. The dumbest person on earth is thee which only hears his own voice, cough cough. If you can't think, why speak. You're not even a funny clown.

Its becoming a reality. You might wanna read up a little on the Electric Universe Theory. Its far more convincing than gravity models. Yes I've studied it for over 30 years and became bored.It doesn't fit what I observe. EU makes more sense to me. So I guess I'm a spammer too huh? I'm simply pointing out another view.

There are those who look, but do not seethere are those who listen, but do not hear

The EU theory and site are a bunch of Electrical eng. that conned you out of money and logic if you believe them over the empirical data of mainstream science. their theory makes assumptions that are physically impossible and their record for prediction is worse than bad, it is stellar (pun intended) in its inability. Just because you might see a similar pattern in a picture does NOT mean there is causation or correlation. You cannot predict E=MC2 from abstract or surreal art (think Dali's The Persistence of Memory)

mostly, TOO MUCH has been thoroughly DEBUNKED so...if you post it, you would also be a spammer and troll

Yes I've studied it for over 30 years and became bored.It doesn't fit what I observe.

@Deleriousone last thinga belief is NOT the same thing as SCIENCE or empirical data... and a POV is NOT the same thing as postulating about the scientific reasons for something happening.

CD posts here with pseudoscience and DEBUNKED science from the EU handbook because he does NOT know physics.

Did you understand the flaw in his comment I posted above? If you did... then good, you should learn MORE about real physics...

If you did not, go here: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htmYou can take the courses free just like I did (and still do)learn the RIGHT way and WHY things are doing what we know they are doing before suggesting that EU is the correct interpretation. Some of their science is pretty legit (SOME of the plasma science) but THAT does not mean it ALL is... only that there is SOME legit science!

I hope you learn and enjoy. You will find reality a lot more interesting than EU

There are those who look, but do not seethere are those who listen, but do not hear

The EU theory and site are a bunch of Electrical eng. that conned you out of money and logic if you believe them over the empirical data of mainstream science. their theory makes assumptions that are physically impossible and their record for prediction is worse than bad, it is stellar (pun intended) in its inability. Just because you might see a similar pattern in a picture does NOT mean there is causation or correlation. You cannot predict E=MC2 from abstract or surreal art (think Dali's The Persistence of Memory)

mostly, TOO MUCH has been thoroughly DEBUNKED so...if you post it, you would also be a spammer and troll

Empirical data based in a false priori is pseudoscience, and because you are unwilling to read about scientific history you have become high priest of the gaslight era dogma and to question those assumptions is heresy as evidenced by your righteous indignation of what is "legit" which is quite humorous considering your own belief system.

Yes well, only intelligent people know intelligence when they see it, so I'll spare you and your dim witted humor and your even worse chaotic logic. The dumbest person on earth is thee which only hears his own voice, cough cough. If you can't think, why speak. You're not even a funny clown.

'Thee' eric? Thee? Try the NIV. It's also full of adulterated translation but at least it's readable. It makes it a little easier to read about all the many things your god says happened, which we now know didn't happen.

So what does that make him? An incompetent? A liar? An omnipotent god who chooses to obliterate evidence and replace it with only absolutely convincing contrary evidence?

And why would he do that eric? Why would he LIE to you to find out how much you TRUSTED him?

Or perhaps he is just the clumsy invention of incompetents and liars. The NIV makes this a little easier to see that this is probably the case.

I wonder if these gamma ray sources are related to the recently discovered clouds of gas that surround galaxies. Powerful emissions along the spin axis of the central super massive object might produce a Bremsstrahlung type of reaction in the gas cloud.

Powerful emissions along the spin axis of the central super massive object might produce a Bremsstrahlung type of reaction in the gas cloud.

Indeed - the problem is in source of these emissions. The central black hole in Milky Way seems to be pretty quiet and it even f*cks the visible clouds falling into it. The accretion process from outside is not apparently the main culprit there.

@delerious& updated recently (28 January 2014)as shown HERE : http://www.tim-th...aqs.htmland the updated page is here: http://www.tim-th...l_1.htmlScott gets trounced by PHYSICS... and the inability to do research on the subject that he is supposedly talking about and redefining.

Again... there is SOME legitimate science in EU (plasma physics) but there is FAR MORE in mainstream, & its supported with empirical data.

Learn about PHYSICS and then go on to learn about astrophysics (which will include classes on plasma physics)... THEN come back and re-read EU. You will see the foundation of fallacies that it is built upon

"Empirical data based in a false priori"Yes! "A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience"It has nothing to do with the Data or the instruments it has everything to do with the assumptions someone has interpreting that data.Read some science history."There is no polite way of asking someone have you considered that your entire life has been devoted to a delusion" Daniel Dennett

I like the Primer Field idea of bowl-shaped magnetic fields, but the problem I have is conceiving of how these fields are formed. Do you know if LaPoint has put together any equations or theories beyond the observation alone describing the nature of these fields?

He has done both. The theories are spot on...if he ever puts out the one on the solar cycle it would be fun listening to the antiquated notions of the mainstream about why it is still a gravitationally confined ball of gas. @ TJdover - He is building right now, not theorizing. The bowls do more than anyone can fathom...strangely enough the 70 or so of us that have access to the machines have no doubt who the masters of pseudoscience are and who has it right. But hey, I am just a pompous crank on an internet forum without a PHD from an accredited learning institution...barely more educated than a patent clerk.

@Torbjorn_Larsson_OM Your comments are rude, and you do yourself no credit in resorting to insults @no_fate.

I almost failed to reach your important criticism, that "galactic magnetic fields are non-homogeneous," I disagree that this is an issue, and think it is confusing chaotic systems with turbulent systems. I'm also pretty sure that the morphology of the lobes is expected from plasma systems.

@Torbjorn_Larsson_OM. The Planck data seems to "show that there is large-scale organisation in some parts of the Galactic magnetic field". This may or may not be typical of other galaxies, and does not seem to offer data outside the galaxy, above and below its plane where the lobes are seen. Details on the ESA website here: http://goo.gl/LTIyOP

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